War on gangs: Drug case strategies work where RICO tactics failed

Last winter, an eclectic mix of law enforcement officers began meeting in command posts around Northern California.

Their mission was so secret even fellow cops weren't allowed to know what they were up to.

The cadres of local police, state narcotics officers and federal agents were plotting how to systematically bring down entire regiments of one of the West's most infamous gangs.

Four months later, hundreds of officers in SWAT attire began a string of early-morning takedowns, arresting hundreds of leaders and members of the Nuestra Familia, beginning in Salinas with Operation Knockout, followed by Operation Crimson Tide in the Sacramento area and Operation Tapout in the Central Valley.

"Salinas is the hub of all of this," said Special Agent Supervisor Mike Hudson of the state's Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement. He worked on the Crimson Tide investigation.

"It's not a coincidence that Salinas came, and then us, and then Tapout."

Now, in what many see as a historic offensive, at least five large-scale conspiracy cases against the Nuestra Familia and its alleged drug-dealing operations are simultaneously under way in California courts. This strategic shift is not only new, it's unique to the West.

Disparate agencies have banded together to apply drug-cop surveillance methods and use a mix of federal and state narcotics and firearms laws they hope will disrupt the gang's economic engines. Some aspects of the approach have already been used to fight smaller gangs, such as Stockton's Loc Town Crips and the Merced Gangster Crips.

But the Nuestra Familia cases are striking, both in their scale and the military precision of their timing. They span a wide geographic range across the gang's stronghold — Northern California's agricultural counties — and this year culminated in near-simultaneous takedowns of large local regiments.

"This is an unprecedented response to a problem that's never been addressed systematically before," said California's "gang czar" Paul Seave, director of the Governor's Office of Gang and Youth Violence Policy.

Hudson agrees. "This is the way to investigate organized criminal gangs around the state," he said. "You take a regiment down and a vacuum is created. That void is quickly filled if you haven't disrupted the other regions."

Gang crimes decreased

From January to June, Hudson led the investigation of the gang's Sacramento, Yuba and Sutter counties regiment, a case that "kind of merged" with the Operation Knockout team's work in Salinas.

Crimson Tide ended with 41 arrests, which included two alleged regiment commanders, and murder charges in four cold cases.

Gang crimes in the area were reduced almost immediately, Hudson said. "I just know that we've made a huge impact up here."

In Salinas, too, a period of relative calm followed the April 22 Operation Knockout arrests, although violence flared again in the summer. More than 40 people were charged in state and federal courts, including Martin "Cyclone" Montoya, who, last year, was considered Nuestra Familia's Salinas regiment boss.

The most recent takedown, called Operation Tapout, took place five days after Crimson Tide, with Salinas police traveling to Earlimart to help in the arrests of 24 more alleged gang associates, including the man officers have for years described as a rising Nuestra Familia kingpin, Shawn "Bubbles" Cameron of Hanford.

Salinas Police Chief Louis Fetherolf said those sweeps were just the beginning.

"The public is going to continue to read about more suppression efforts throughout this year," he said.

Layers of organization

California law enforcement has carved out this strategy in response to problems that are unique to the region.

"We have more street gang violence in California than in any other place in the country," Seave said. "The gang presence has grown in the last 20 years. Now, we find gang violence and murders in places we never would have expected."

Contrary to popular belief, he said, most of these gangs are not highly organized, though they commit a great deal of violence. But another layer of organized gangs keeps a close connection to the state's prisons.

Among gang cops, there's a common belief that East Coast policymakers are out of touch with these realities in the West.

For example, the most recent National Gang Threat Assessment from the Justice Department doesn't even list Nuestra Familia as a prison gang — but does list the far less active Black Guerilla Family, whose numbers total only 100 to 300.

In contrast, state investigators believe Nuestra Familia has an estimated 2,000 members who cycle in and out of prison — and its street-level Norteño gang soldiers number tens of thousands more. Police have linked the Nuestra Familia to more than 1,000 murders during the four decades it has been in existence.

And perhaps more than any state, California's street gang activity is tied to policies regulated by these prison gang "parent companies."

"We are now coming to understand the extent to which prison gangs are affecting life outside the prisons," Seave said.

Gangs in the Central Valley are responding to policies set by leaders in state and federal prisons, he said.

In addition to those differences, Western courts have developed tighter privacy standards that can affect how gang surveillance is handled.

"Even if there's a national strategy, here on the West Coast, we have different rules," said Jason Hitt, a federal prosecutor in Sacramento.

Narcotics approach

The West's new approach in the gang wars began to take shape in 2006, when investigations of Nuestra Familia and Norteño gang members from Salinas, Castroville and Watsonville morphed into two large FBI and DEA wiretap cases, known as Operation Valley Star and Operation Dictator.

That same year, the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement launched GSET, its acronym for the state Department of Justice's Gang Suppression Enforcement Teams.

"It was, basically, we're going to use the same investigation techniques we use on drug dealers, and we're going to use them against gang members," Hudson said.

The teams behind Valley Star and GSET both chose to rely heavily on the tricks of the trade of narcotics officers: set up surveillance to prove a conspiracy, arrange for informants to buy or sell drugs, and get it all on tape. Then, coordinate a massive, all-at-once takedown.

Hitt, who is prosecuting the Valley Star investigation, said drug-based cases are easier to prove in court than the feds' preferred tool against organized crime: the RICO statutes (Racketeering-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations), passed in 1970 to prosecute the Mafia.

Proving a RICO case means showing a racketeering enterprise has a pattern of criminal activity over time. The list of requirements can be daunting.

Proving a drug conspiracy, Hitt said, is far simpler.

"The tactic itself is extremely powerful," even with prison gangs such as the Nuestra Familia, he said. "From Valley Star, the thinking was that the drugs are the profit center on the outside for the guys on the inside."

With wiretap and live recordings, prosecutors can prove a drug-dealing conspiracy without relying on witnesses — and under federal drug laws, they still get stiff prison terms, he said.

For the past several years at Department of Justice headquarters in Washington — known to insiders as "Main Justice" — experts have been training prosecutors to use RICO in gang cases.

But Main Justice, Hitt said, doesn't always grasp that under privacy standards upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, just getting approval for electronic surveillance is tougher in California.

"Our rules are so different," he said. "Our wiretap affidavits are 100 pages. In the Southern District in New York, they're 30."

And California gangs have been quick to respond to RICO: Gang members have studied the law and adapted their language and methods to avoid qualifying as a racketeering enterprise.

After the FBI's 2000 Operation Black Widow targeted the gang's top leaders, the Nuestra Familia "made some changes to deal with future RICO prosecutions," Hitt said.

"But they're still dealing dope."

Early segregation

Another new and important aspect of the 2010 takedowns is that Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement agents worked hand-in-hand with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to have defendants validated as prison gang members before their arrests.

In the past, Hudson said, convicted Nuestra Familia members would go into main prison yards where they could recruit soldiers and order crimes for months before their gang alliances were documented. Under the new pre-validation system, they can be separated from regular inmates immediately.

"BNE got it right on this one," he said.

While the operations add up to the government's largest offensive ever against the Nuestra Familia, few have ventured to predict what the aftermath of the concentrated takedowns might be.

"If you disrupt a gang, you interrupt the gang's ability to commit violence and intimidation," Seave said. "But if we do nothing more, the gang will come back."

He would like to amp up the Ceasefire strategy his office is applying in Salinas and several Central Valley cities. Ceasefire aims intense law enforcement suppression at gang members who continue to commit violence, but offers help to those who decide to stop the shooting.

"We know that we can't arrest our way out of the gang problem," he said. "The next step will be to adapt carrot-and-stick strategies like Ceasefire to prison gangs inside and outside the prison."

Meanwhile, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has hinted at more takedowns to come.

After the Operation Knockout sweeps in Salinas he said, "This is not done yet."

The war on gangs

Five major cases are now under way in California federal and state courts targeting the Nuestra Familia's regiments and their alleged drug operations. The cases represent an unprecedented level of collaboration between local, state and federal agencies to fight West Coast gangs.

Case updates

Operation Valley Star:

· In Eastern District Federal Court, Sacramento: Two dozen people were arrested in this 2007 takedown, including Larry Amaro and Mario Diaz, two Monterey County men believed to be running the Nuestra Familia's statewide operations at the time. Several defendants have been convicted or pleaded guilty. Amaro is among the first main group scheduled to start trial in Sacramento in three weeks.

Operation Dictator:

· In Eastern District Federal Court, Fresno: This operation led to the arrest of eight, including Bakersfield resident Fidel Ramon Castro, who still awaits trial on narcotics charges after his co-defendants entered guilty pleas. The case involved drug deliveries to Nuestra Familia associates in Salinas, payments made to traffickers in Mexico, and Castro's alleged attempted takeover of a Bakersfield medical marijuana dispensary.

Operation Knockout:

· In Northern District Federal Court, San Jose: After months of investigation following a 2009 law enforcement summit in Salinas, more than 40 Salinas-area residents were arrested in this April takedown, including Martin "Cyclone" Montoya, considered the gang's one-time regiment leader in Salinas. Montoya and nine others are awaiting a trial date in a San Jose federal court, while others have been arraigned in Monterey County.

Operation Crimson Tide:

· In Sacramento County Court, Sacramento: This six-month methamphetamine investigation spanned six counties and ended with 41 arrests, including the alleged Nuestra Familia regiment commander for the greater Sacramento area, Robert Juan Salazar, and his acting replacement, Cesar Noe Villa. Six defendants, including Salazar, also are charged with murder in connection with several once-cold cases.

Operation Tapout:

· In Eastern District Federal Court, Fresno: Salinas police assisted in this Central Valley operation that resulted in the arrest of 24 suspects, including Shawn "Bubbles" Cameron of Hanford, long named by investigators as the Nuestra Familia leader for the Hanford-Fresno area. Cameron and others in the case face potential life sentences. No trial date has been set in Fresno's federal court.

Source: Federal and state court records, California Department of Justice